Nha San Collective - Gaps

​Nhasan studio is excited to present Nguyen Tran Nam's site-specific video installation Ke // Gap, the second installment of our 2010 "EMERGING ARTIST PROGRAM".

A Ke is a gap, a crack between closely spaced things, a peephole in a door. The word applies to the microscopic - the delicate space between the veins on a leaf or the crystalline surface of an insect's wing that can fill with light. Ke is also a loophole in the law. Ke ho refers to the ability to navigate the underbelly of society’s rules, slyly weaseling through spaces where laws cannot be enforced. Nguyen Tran Nam summons us, with a quiet deliberation that we pause, peer through the ke, and attempt to slip through into a shadowed, gray terrain.

The work is comprised of a suite of fifteen sculptures. They are part mechanized creature, and part hive made from wire armatures, swathed in string and caked with a mud and paper pulp. Each hive cradles, within its bellied interior, a unique black and white video shown on a continuous loop. The hives grow from beneath the beams, projecting a dim glow in the shadowed corners of Nhasan.

Nguyen Tran Nam has installed his sculptures in the dark places in a room that are often forgotten. His camera lens focuses on the parts of the body that people tend to forget. He gives us a nearly microscopic insect-eye view. The crevice between a thumb and finger, opening and closing slowly. The sleepy bend of an elbow. The lick of a tongue. In these subtle movements we find sex, we find un-muted desire and a new way of seeing. Embedding the digital into an earthen dwelling, Nguyen Tran Nam merges disparate language and place.

Nguyen Tran Nam was born in Hung Yen province in 1979. He moved to Hanoi at the age of seven, and graduated from the Hanoi Fine Arts University in 2003 with a degree in painting. A multi-disciplinary artist working in video, installation, painting and performance, Nam's work has exhibited at the Cadaver Exquisite Video Series during the Contemporary Asian Art Week (New York City, USA), and in Hanoi Link: A Preview (Melbourne, Australia). In Vietnam he held the solo exhibition Indefinitely at Ryllega gallery, and has participated in group shows such as “10+” at Nhasan studio, X-seconds film project at Goethe Institute Hanoi, Three Days - Three Artists at L'espace Hanoi, and Go in the Market at Viet Art Center, Hanoi.

Ke // Gap is the second installation in our "EMERGING ARTIST PROGRAM". A total of six artists, Le Huy Hoang (April 2010), and upcoming, Nguyen Phuong Linh, Lai Thi Dieu Ha, Nguyen Trinh Thi and Nguyen Van Phuc will have solo exhibitions at Nhasan studio over the course of 2010.

The EMERGING ARTIST PROGRAM is made possible with generous funding from the Culture Development and Exchange Foundation of the Danish Embassy in Hanoi (CDEF).